


An Ordinary Adventure

by mitzirocker



Category: Twitch Plays Pokemon (Let's Play)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-26 09:31:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17743352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzirocker/pseuds/mitzirocker
Summary: What if there were no Voices? No gods, no non-pocket monsters, no evil teams, no glitches, no worlds in danger? Just thirty-three kids across fourteen regions starting their pokemon journeys one day.





	An Ordinary Adventure

Kanto’s had a ton of applicants for trainer licences this year, and there’s only so many starters Oak can get. As such, he’s had to make some painful choices, and it’s a  _total coincidence_  his grandson Blue and his grandson’s best friend Red and his grandson’s best friend’s twin brother who is also Oak’s apprentice Abe all made the cut.

Part of the reason there were so many applicants this year is that applications have been closed for the past three years, because of that thing with the Rockets that ended with Evan dead and Azure vanishing into the mountains after she crushed them. But, like Oak told Bill, the Rockets haven’t been seen since then, and their kids can’t not go on a pokemon journey. This isn’t Sinnoh.

After much pleading, arguing, and her going behind his back, Bill eventually okayed Alice going on her journey - under two conditions. First, she sticks with the Pallet boys no matter what. Second, she brings along a couple of minders. Said minders are Amber and Athena, who look like teenage girls but are actually pokemon Bill turned into humans half a decade ago during a poketransfer experiment and have been hanging around ever since. They also want to go on a pokemon journey. Alice isn’t sure they understand the concept.

The group was  _supposed_ to be rounded out by this kid named Larry none of them knew, but just after they left town he vanished into the woods. Instead, they got X-Man, who joined them at their campsite one night and never left. He’s harmless enough. Probably. It’s hard to tell, on account of he wears a cardboard box on his head most of the time. 

And there’s a whole bunch of people they keep running into, like “Ash” and “Gary” (the kids don’t know their real names) who are filming a TV show about a pokemon journey, Amber’s fellow ex-pokemon and archnemesis Green, Grape the teenage wizard, and the eevee who gets into long pokespeak arguments with X-Man’s chatot every time they meet.

At night, Abe and Alice scientifically observe the local pokemon while Blue and Athena draw up training schedules. Amber and Red argue about philosophy, and X-Man and his chatot examine the inside of his cardboard box. None of the kids can cook at all, so the mon have drawn up a rota. They eat a lot of fruit, prey animals, and prepackaged dinners. Abe is always the last one to fall asleep, tucked in his sleeping bag, looking at his maps.

* * *

Elm isn’t sure what’s up with this year’s Johto set. It seems like at least a decade worth of weird applicants got crammed into one year, and then the forest gods threw in Baba just to be difficult. Just finding a day when they could all get into town was complicated enough, what with Eunice’s superstitions and Aoooo’s unpredictability and AJ being unable to leave the mountains unless the weather’s perfect and hating towns in general and New Bark in particular so he couldn’t stay there - anyway.

There’s AJ, who’s about as close to a feral child you can get while still having loving parents and a home, Aoooo, who’s been an actual feral child since her family died and grows more pokemonish every time he sees her, Eunice, who would be the normal one except she’s so focused on her work and ambitions and also Elm’s not certain she’s even from Johto, Baba, who came crashing out of Kanto a year ago and set up a drug lab in his basement within weeks  _she claims she’s a magikarp **what’s wrong with her**_  and Evan, who Elm pities too much to get worked up about. If he’d washed up in Cherrygrove with a single pokeball and nearly three years missing from his memory he’s sure he’d be constantly fretting too.

Despite everything, the kids get along well. Sure, Aoooo’s life goal is to FRIEND EVERYTHING and Evan’s still got a bit of his old kindness left, but even AJ tolerates the group more than AJ tolerates most people. They’re even travelling together after a fashion (AJ and Aoooo spend most of their time wandering the woods alone), except Baba who went haring off on her own almost immediately and keeps showing up on internet news sites with bounties on her head.

They also keep running into a band of probably-siblings on a probably-crime-spree. There’s Silver, the leader with the raging inferiority complex, Four, who acts like they escaped from an over-the-top action cartoon, Georgi, an asshole, and Deku, a megalomaniac prone to long-winded speeches. AJ thinks the crime siblings are stalking them, but the others think it’s just a series of  ~~wacky~~  annoying coincidences.

Still, there are nights where nothing weird has happened all day and they can settle down peacefully. Eunice is determined to learn how to cook great camping food, but until then they’ve got AJ’s mad trail mix skills. Aoooo doesn’t always stay with them at night, but when she does she’s accompanied by a horde of wild pokemon she’s befriended. Evan listens to Eunice and Aoooo swapping stories about the day, watches AJ being chatted at by that rattata kid over his pokegear, feels Tux’s vines wrapped around his hand, and knows that being here is so much better than losing his mind in New Bark.

Fourteen more badges and he can look for Azure.

* * *

Two months ago, it looked like this year’s Hoenn set would just be Birch’s son Brendan and his childhood friend Camila. Then the applicants started flooding in. There’s Arty, the new Petalburg gym leader’s kid, Nina and Raijin, a pair of rival musicians from Slateport, and Acacia, who stumbled into Littleroot in ragged clothes two days before they were going to set out. They’re not as bad as Elm’s making the Johto set sound, but they’re energetic enough that Birch was a little worried they’d burn down Littleroot before they could leave. Especially since he could only get torchic this year.

Camila, who wanted torchic anyway, is happy about that. Camila has always been loud and iconoclastic but now she’s away from her mother she’s gone all in. She’s taken to calling herself Girl A and announcing that she’ll turn the world upside down through graffiti, rabble-rousing, and arson, though she hasn’t picked a cause yet. Brendan has also gotten more intense and prone to motive rants since he left home, though since he’s into water samples instead of black magic he’s way more boring about it.

Arty Haze thinks Hoenn is way cooler than Johto. There’s always something cool to try, some new scene he can get into for as long as he’s in town. Even the wild pokemon are cuter here. Acacia is an heiress from the Lilycove elite who won’t explain how she ended up on the other side of Hoenn in a tattered stage costume with no money no matter how much he asks. She acts like going on a pokemon journey is this arduous trek across untamed wilderness and Arty doesn’t get her at all.

Nina is the civilian identity of the legendary DJ KyuKyu, rising star of the underground Slateport music scene and self-proclaimed master of techno. She’s actually way less obnoxious offstage than on, which helps when she’s trying to go incognito. And SOMEHOW that idiot Raijin still found her. He’s the self-proclaimed classical prince, with bad hair and worse taste in music, and despite being as deep into Slateport’s underground as she is he still thinks their stupid rivalry matters.

Girl A and Brendan are racing to Ever Grande, and the rest of the set’s joined in. They travel the routes alone for the most part, sometimes in pairs, and there’s always someone who ends up doing a leg with Wally, this sickly shy kid who’s getting his journey funded by Arty’s dad. Somehow, though, they always end up getting together in the cities. Girl A and Arty go exploring down back alleys, Acacia and Raijin tour the museums and contest halls, Nina and Brendan visit the flea markets and business districts, and they all meet up with Wally at the pokemon centre for dinner. They don’t share rooms though; if they did the discussions and arguments and impromptu parties would last all night.

* * *

For dozens of historical and cultural and geographical reasons, pokemon journeys just aren’t as big of a deal in Sinnoh as they are in the rest of Ransei. Some years they don’t get any applicants at all; this year looked like one of them until three came in at the last minute after Rowan set off on this year’s research trip. He had to drop everything and hurry back to Sandgem from Snowpoint, detouring to Solaceon to pick up the starters. It’s great that more kids are interested in pokemon training, but couldn’t they have applied sooner?

They didn’t apply sooner because going on the pokemon journey was itself a last minute decision. See, when Pearl’s best friend Napoleon moved to the country he wasn’t too broken up. He was sixteen years old, he could handle himself. Except he ended up owing a lot of money and pissing off a lot of people, and had to skip town. He ran from Veilstone to Twinleaf in three days and hid in Leo’s house.

At first Napoleon didn’t believe Pearl’d pissed off so many people so badly. Then the scouts started showing up and delivering vague threats. While fortifying Twinleaf was an  _option_  it wasn’t exactly practical, and he wasn’t so much of an asshole he’d abandon his oldest friend at the first hint of danger, especially since without him Pearl was guaranteed to die painfully. He was considering options when his little brother Philippe came up with an awful idea that Pearl instantly latched onto.

A pokemon journey! Philippe thought it was the perfect plan: get Pearl roaming all over Sinnoh, spending lots of time in the wilderness, building an army of monsters to fight the Veilstone game corner crowd! Pearl loved the idea. Napoleon didn’t; Pearl was absolutely guaranteed to annoy something he couldn’t fight off and Napoleon was  _not_  going with them, best friends schmest friends they knew he wanted nothing to do with pokemon… There was a lot of vigorous debate, and at some point an application form landed in Rowan’s inbox.

Pearl wanted to go, and Napoleon went with him. He volunteered Philippe to join them as a form of revenge that backfired when Philippe took to the monster-infested countryside like a floatzel to water. The three of them spend a lot of time off-route, looking for rare pokemon and interesting landmarks. They’ve had a few encounters with people looking for Pearl, but so far they’ve gotten out of all of them with lives and teams intact. They’ve also picked up an ally and occasional travelling companion: Dawn, who’s Rowan’s assistant on paper but in practice is more of a bodyguard. She once won a fight with an ursaring.

They spend a lot of nights in rural pokemon centres that see a new trainer once a month, the kind of place where you cook your own food and there’s one guest bedroom. At night they build blanket tents rigged with traps, where Philippe freaks out Pearl with one of his eighty thousand ghost stories and Napoleon carefully grooms his eevee.

* * *

Pokemon journeys are new to Unova, which means Juniper has to provide incentives. Free bus travel. Advice on pokemon at any time. Way more than eight registered gyms. Shop discounts. The ability to start anywhere; no matter your hometown, Juniper will send your starter to you. She’s also increased the minimum age to a point she’s more comfortable with. Ransei isn’t known for its vast road network.

This year, the Nuvema trio finally hit that minimum. Juniper’s known Jimmy, Bianca, and Cheren since they were toddlers, and is very happy the three of them have chosen to go on the journey. Well, Cheren and Bianca chose; they had to drag Jimmy away from his C-Station to get him to come along. But the parents were convinced and the starters were obtained. When the three of them travel the routes together, Bianca teasing Cheren while Jimmy giggles, they look like they stepped out of some wholesome children’s cartoon.

Another three kids started this year, beginning in Aspertia. Juniper’s only met them over Xtransceiver, but they obviously have a much less complementary dynamic than the Nuvema set. Cly’s acidity and general cynicism annoy Alek, Alek’s flippancy and general callousness piss off Cly, and Hugh, who’s somehow friends with both of them, is too focused on being the best to mediate. The six of them are planning to meet up with Juniper in Castelia to plan their next moves, but the professor suspects the Aspertia set will split up long before them.

The two groups have swapped Entralink IDs, and there’s always someone with their C-Gear open and the other group projected out. Jimmy tries to hack their pokedexes so they can swap entries, while Cly acts as a sounding board and auxiliary peripheral vision. Hugh and Cheren disagree on everything related to training pokemon. Alek and Bianca bond over baby pokemon and how cute they are. Sometimes they get calls from Juniper and assorted relatives. Cly’s pretty sure that once they hit the big cities they’ll all fill their contacts with random trainers on similar journeys. She’d like to start with that mysterious green-haired guy the Nuvema set see sometimes.

* * *

Every single year, Kukui gets a meticulously formatted Johto-style application letter from an immigrant from Ransei asking him if he’ll let them do a pokemon journey. Standard procedure is to send it back, explaining that they don’t do those in Alola, but so long as you’re eleven and in Iki when the festival starts and don’t annoy Tapu Koko for whatever reason you’re welcome to give the island challenge a try. But this year’s kid delivered the application in person, and he looked so excited and hopeful that Kukui gave him a popplio and a pokedex and told him that the festival wouldn’t start for another month but he was welcome to start training pokemon beforehand. Hala’s interpreted this as a power play, and while he isn’t wrong, the smile on that boy’s face when Kukui tossed him his first pokeball had way more to do with it.

Hala couldn’t exactly deny the boy a chance at the island challenge. Some years they don’t get any trial-goers; three is the most they’ve had in a decade. There’s Hau, Hala’s grandson, who’s been looking forward to his own island challenge since he learned what the festival was for and isn’t letting the Mahalo Trail bridge incident stop him no matter what the doctor says, Devin, who washed up on the beach several years ago and wanders off so often he was going to be given a pokemon to look out for him even if he hadn’t wanted to go with Hau, and Roark, the kid who got his starter from Kukui, who moved to Alola from Sinnoh two months ago and is really enthusiastic about the island challenge despite not exactly getting it. They had a great festival this year; there were three trial-goer battles and a wrestling competition, and Tapu Koko showed up to chase the fireworks.

The boys started their challenges together, but two days later Devin had run off the routes to follow some drifloon and Roark wanted to spend a week in Hau’oli. The three of them are taking their challenges solo, though they do travel together sometimes and tend to seek each other out for multi battles and stuff like that. The unofficial fourth member of the group is Nigel, a pokemon ranger on a top secret mission who’s too old for the island challenge but was at the festival and is taking a similar route across Alola. He knows lots about all kinds of pokemon and is always willing to help the trial-goers along a dangerous-looking route. The unofficial fifth member is Lillie, who’s Kukui’s assistant and travels around Alola on errands for him. She’s not a trainer, but she loves pokemon and has a knack for finding really good pokebeans.

According to Sophocles, Festival Plaza will one day be a fully-immersive virtual world, where you can meet up with anyone anywhere and trade and battle pokemon. Right now it’s a clunky pokedex program that Nigel managed to get trapped inside once. The group uses it to keep in touch out of a lack of any other options, but they do use it. In the evening, once they’ve found places to camp, the kids log on. Roark keeps up a stream of chatting about anything and everything, interspersed with Devin’s bird photos, Hau’s battle videos, and Lillie’s accounts of the pokemon she met that day. Nigel helps the others set up camping areas and befriend the local pokemon, and is always the last to log off at night.

* * *

Across the world, pokemon journeys, and journeys a lot like pokemon journeys, have begun. In Kalos, the usual set of ten-to-thirteen-year-olds have been joined by a nineteen-year-old aristocrat named D who’s only here as part of an elaborate tax dodge and is loudly uninterested in adventure and friendship and growing as a person. In Tunod, a latecomer named Honey has finally convinced Willow to give her a starter despite missing this year’s application deadline, and is rushing to catch up with the rest of the set. In Orre, A7, a former Snagem grunt, Rui, an apprentice shaman, and Alpha, a recently-upgraded cyborg, are reluctantly working together to find out who’s creating the shadow pokemon. In Rijon, PikaPizza employee of the month Paul is adjusting to life with his new company bulbasaur. In Naljo, Cyan of the Dragon Clan and her retroactive starter are trying to plot out a route home. In [REDACTED], the experimental robot TPPSIM is undergoing its first real test. And in Auricanty - actually, let’s not talk about Auricanty.

This world is not peaceful. It’s a pokemon world, where untouched wilderness stretches across continents and the spirits of the natural world are everywhere. Here, primal forces are sentient and temperamental and the unexplainable is a fact of life. This is a world of legends, where the wildest dreams can be fulfilled and there is always a grand adventure to be found. Throughout their journeys, these children will meet all sorts of people and grow into their full selves; that’s what a pokemon journey is all about. All they have to do is step into the tall grass and go.


End file.
